i'm stating this because it is my personal opinion and i personally have experienced the ups and downs of the sport, been to many courts and played the game many different ways for almost all my life, reinforcing my standpoint.

My opponent is Con on the resolution, but based on his opening round it seems like he's actually for it. So I'll assume he is Pro for the resolution "Basketball is mostly a luck sport". I will negate.

I define luck sport to be a game where luck plays a bigger factor than skill. As example would be Rock-Paper-Scissors.

1. Basketball players' size, weight, and age

If basketball was mostly luck, then we would expect people from all body sizes to do equally well. But this isn't the case. On average, NBA players have roughly been 6 feet 7 inches, weighed 225 pounds, and been 27 years old. This is because these numbers give you the strength to push defenders out of the way and the height to get over them. If a 5-foot player tried to play basketball, he would struggle because a taller defender could easily block his shot, regardless of how "lucky" the 5-foot player is. I could pull up numbers showing that empirically, NBA players under 6 feet had a lower field goal % than those over 7 feet, but I'll assume thats obvious.

2. Law of physics

When you shoot the ball, whether it goes in is determined solely by the force you put on the ball and the direction in which you shoot it. There is no "luck" to whether the ball goes in or not, its 100% dependent on the touch you put on the ball. Sometimes the ball doesn't go in, but thats because you either pushed the ball too hard to too soft, makng it miss the basket. Of course, we don't have as much control over the force we put on the ball as we like, which can account for even good players having bad games shooting the ball, but at the end of the day, the ball going in the basket is a science and has no luck component.

3. Inside vs outsite shots

On average, NBA players who shoot the ball more closely to the basket have a higher field goal % than those that shoot from further away. This proves you can increase the ball's probability of going in the basket, contradicting that it is mostly luck.